Month: January 2018

The High Cost Of Not Developing Your People US companies spent more than $70 billion [internationally, $130 billion was spent] last year on learning and development. Unfortunately still, the majority of training that takes place is mandated at a specific time, in a stuffy conference room or via the intranet with a boring and ill-prepared instructor/speaker stumbling through poorly designed and miserably tedious PowerPoint slides. Even with the amount of money spent in the US on learning and development, the average employee only has approximately 1% of their week to dedicate to their learning & development. Taking a deeper look into training among various size organizations, the team at Shift Disruptive E-Learning found that organization’s with fewer than 100 employees provide an averageRead More

Embracing Creativity In The Workplace The moment you set foot into a creative workplace – you can sense it. There is a unique and compelling buzz in the air; individual work spaces are often playfully unorthodox, and people are energetic, engaged, and eager to interact and share ideas. Some organizations and executives think that buying colorful and playful furniture and instituting a casual dress-code constitutes as “creativity”, this is so not true… All organizations – hopefully – invite and welcome creative people to join their team. Those people and their minds should be encouraged. But there is an important distinction between acting on the occasional “out-of-the-box” idea and cultivating creativity as a business strategy. THREE TYPES OF CREATIVITY Most people have a limitedRead More

Integrity – A Workplace Non-Negotiable Global research from Edelman’s Trust Barometer reveals that despite integrity being the most desired leadership quality, only about 25% of people think their bosses actually have it. If you type “What Do Bosses Lie About” into Google Search it returns almost 2.5 million results! So, I don’t know how provocative it will be to share that…I have found – especially in the last few years – that there is a staggering level in the lack of integrity in today’s workplaces. This is my third attempt at writing about this topic. Generally, when I start on a new blog article I always have an outline in my head to address the issue, I have examples to share, bullet pointsRead More

How To Be Productive When Bored At Work If you’re bored, that means you’re boring – Mrs. Schellenberg [my 3rd Grade Teacher] I have never forgotten this statement. I can clearly remember to whom and how Mrs. Schellenberg said it. I can remember what I was wearing that day. I remember what subject we were studying. For some reason that nugget of wisdom snapped at a fellow student in such a perfectly scary-teacher-way really stuck with me. As a result, I have always looked inward when I am “bored” and find things to do that are “productive” and occupy my mind, my body, and my time. There are some pretty shocking statistics around boredom at work…here are a few to marinade in: EmployeesRead More

Creating An Organizational Ecosystem Of Learning One of the things that became exceedingly apparent during several of my conversations and visits with various companies last year is that most organizational learning and performance strategies fave fallen behind what is now expected in the evolving workplace and what is needed to give the employees a competitive edge both in their current role and for their future conveyable marketability. A few organizations have expressed to me concern about the declining value and impact of their traditional training strategies and were pursuing and developing strategies to be proactive about making it a valuable and viable tool and on-going resource for their people – which I love and admire. However, there are still too many organizations thatRead More

Why It May Be Time For a Professional Reinvention The new year is always a fabulous time to look at your career and visualize exactly what you would like it to be, then take the appropriate action(s) to make that vision a reality. I think more so than any other year I have fairly grand plans for my personal and professional life and I have taken the last week to really set some specific goals and actions/timelines for myself when it comes to achieving all that I want to achieve in 2018 and beyond. Last year I didn’t have a “plan” for the year and I was so busy straight out of the gate I never took stock of exactly what I wantedRead More